Lumpy Investment and State-Dependent Pricing in General Equilibrium

The lumpy nature of plant-level investment is generally not taken into account in the context of monetary theory (see, e.g., Christiano et al. 2005 and Woodford 2005). We formulate a generalized (S,s) pricing and investment model which is empirically more plausible along that dimension. Surprisingly, our main result shows that the presence of lumpy investment casts doubt on the ability of sticky prices to imply a quantitatively relevant monetary transmission mechanism.Lumpy investment, Sticky prices

Survival and Years of Good Life in Finland in the very long run

In this paper we apply the recently developed wellbeing indicator ‘Years of Good Life’ (YoGL) to Finland, which has the world’s longest annual demographic time series starting in 1722. We combine this with scenarios up to 2100 as developed under the SSP (Shared Socioeconomic Pathways) framework. YoGL is based primarily on the trend in life expectancy but it also considers age-specific proportions of persons above critical levels of quality of life indicators (using the Sullivan method). Since estimating these indicators for historical populations is a major challenge, the paper uses a wide array of sources to come up with a first crude estimation of how quality of life has changed in Finland over the centuries

Idiosyncratic Shocks, Lumpy Investment and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism

Standard (S, s) models of lumpy investment allow us to match many aspects of the micro data, but it is well known that the implied interest rate sensitivity of investment is unrealistically large. In fact, the micro-level lumpiness in investment puts empirical discipline on the modeling of investment decisions, and this makes it hard to explain the monetary policy transmission mechanism.Peer Reviewe

Idiosyncratic Shocks, Lumpy Investment and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism

Standard (S,s) models of lumpy investment allow us to match many aspects of the micro data, but it is well known that the implied interest rate sensitivity of investment is unrealistically large. The monetary transmission mechanism is therefore a particularly clean experiment to assess the macroeconomic relevance of any investment theory. Our results show that lumpy investment can coexist with a realistic monetary transmission mechanism, but that we are nevertheless still a step away from a micro-founded theory of monetary policy

Idiosyncratic Shocks, Lumpy Investment and the Monetary Transmission Mechanism

Standard (S, s) models of lumpy investment allow us to match many aspects of the micro data, but it is well known that the implied interest rate sensitivity of investment is unrealistically large. In fact, the micro-level lumpiness in investment puts empirical discipline on the modeling of investment decisions, and this makes it hard to explain the monetary policy transmission mechanism

The Demography of Skills-Adjusted Human Capital

The human capital of the working age population has in the past shown to be a key driver not only of economic growth and poverty reduction but also of health, quality of institutions, and adaptive capacity to environmental change. Human capital has mostly been measured in terms of mean years of schooling of the population or the highest educational attainment distribution. But in recent years the attention has shifted to trying to also measure the quality of education in terms of the skills acquired. While much empirical information already exists on the tests of skills of school age children, the situation is not as good with respect to globally comparable data on adult skills. However, what matters for the multiple benefits of human capital is the skill level of adults of working age rather than the skill level of school age children. While the skills of the school-age population are sometimes used as a proxy for that of the adult population, the two can differ widely, particularly in countries that have seen recent expansions of schooling or changes in the educational system. Hence, for many purposes ranging from economic growth regressions to projections of future productivity, or demographic behaviours that reflect the heterogeneity of adults by their skills, there has not yet been an available dataset on skills adjusted human capital for adults on a global scale. This paper presents the first such global data set for the period 1970-2015 for a new summary measure of adult human capital called Skills-Adjusted Mean Years of Schooling (SAMYS). Additionally, for 44 countries we present SAMYS by age and sex. The new measure combines the tested level of skills with the quantity of schooling measured by the average years spent in school. Several features of SAMYS advance the state of the art in the field of human capital measurement. Firstly, it combines tests on adult skills with conventional educational and demographic indicators to gain a fuller understanding of the level of human capital in a country. Second, SAMYS have been estimated for a very large number of countries (201 countries for the year 2015 and 185 countries for the period 1970-2015) to present the broadest possible picture of trends in global human capital. Finally, through using the demographic method of back projection along cohort lines, this new measure gives consistent and comparable data for skills adjusted human capital for all adult age groups and both sexes over a 45-year period. The results show that SAMYS have been improving over time in virtually all countries but that the differences between countries are much greater for SAMYS than for mean years of schooling

Skills-adjusted human capital shows rising global gap

Human capital, broadly defined as the skills acquired through formal education, is acknowledged as one of the key drivers of economic growth and social development. However, its measurement for the working-age populations, on a global scale and over time, is still unsatisfactory. Most indicators either only consider the quantity dimension of education and disregard the actual skills or are demographically inconsistent by applying the skills of the young cohorts in school to represent the skills of the workingage population at the same time. In the case of rapidly expanding or changing school systems, this assumption is untenable. However, an increasing number of countries have started to assess the literacy skills of their adult populations by age and sex directly. Drawing on this literacy data, and by using demographic backprojection and statistical estimation techniques, we here present a demographically consistent indicator for adult literacy skills, the skills in literacy adjusted mean years of schooling (SLAMYS). The measure is given for the population aged 20 to 64 in 185 countries and for the period 1970 to 2015. Compared to the conventional mean years of schooling (MYS)—which has strongly increased for most countries over the past decades, and in particular among poor countries—the trends in SLAMYS exhibit a widening global skills gap between low- and high-performing countries

Dewetting of thin films on heterogeneous substrates: Pinning vs. coarsening

We study a model for a thin liquid film dewetting from a periodic heterogeneous substrate (template). The amplitude and periodicity of a striped template heterogeneity necessary to obtain a stable periodic stripe pattern, i.e. pinning, are computed. This requires a stabilization of the longitudinal and transversal modes driving the typical coarsening dynamics during dewetting of a thin film on a homogeneous substrate. If the heterogeneity has a larger spatial period than the critical dewetting mode, weak heterogeneities are sufficient for pinning. A large region of coexistence between coarsening dynamics and pinning is found.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Lehrende lernen Lernberatung : Qualitativ-interaktionsanalytische Betrachtung einer Lernberatungssequenz zum Kursinhalt Autogenes Training im Rahmen eines Qualifizierungsprojekts für Kursleiter/innen

Im Kontext der Diskussion um selbstgesteuertes Lernen werden gegenüber der Erwachsenenbildung seit Beginn der 1990er Jahre umfassende Transformations- und Innovationsanforderungen auf unterschiedlichen Ebenen formuliert. Bezogen auf die Personengruppe der Kursleitenden verdichtet sich die Debatte in der Forderung nach einer mehr oder weniger radikalen Veränderung des professionellen Selbstverständnisses und reüssiert unter dem Begriff ‚Lernberatung’. Mit diesem Schlagwort, das seine Attraktivität u.a. auch aus seiner Funktion als begriffliche Schnittstelle zweier aktuell hochkonjunktureller Diskussionsbereiche innerhalb der Erwachsenenbildung (selbstgesteuertes Lernen und Beratung) bezieht, wird – wenn auch oft relativ unspezifisch – eine Abwendung vom Prinzip der linearen Wissensvermittlung mit dem Ziel der Ermöglichung, Begleitung und Unterstützung stärker selbstgesteuerter Lernprozesse gefasst. Dabei bleibt jedoch (neben vielem anderen, wie beispielsweise den Konsequenzen auf der organisationalen oder finanzierungstechnischen Ebene) nach wie vor unklar, welche konkreten Kompetenzen Lernberatende für ihr verändertes professionelles Handeln benötigen und wie diese zu erwerben sind. Hinzu kommt, dass Lernberatung auch konzeptionell bisher keineswegs einheitlich gefasst ist. Gleichwohl wird Lernberatung als veränderte Handlungs- und Interaktionsform – (nicht nur) in vielfältigen Forschungs- und Modellprojekten – bereits durchgeführt und ist damit unbestreitbar Teil, erwachsenenbildnerischer Realität. Doch was geschieht tatsächlich in diesen Lernberatungsprozessen? In welcher Weise nehmen Kursleitende ihre neue Rolle wahr? Wie etablieren sie eine Lernberatungssituation? Auf welche Verhaltensmuster, welches Vorwissen greifen sie zurück, um in einer neuen Tätigkeit Handlungssicherheit zu erlangen? Und: Wie verhalten sich die Teilnehmenden im Umgang mit dem neuen Element erwachsenenbildnerischer Praxis? Was erwarten sie von ihren Lernberater/innen? In welchen Situationen, mit welchen Zielsetzungen und Erwartungen nehmen sie Lernberatung wahr? Welche Schwierigkeiten tauchen dabei auf? Kurz: Wie gelingt es den Akteur/innen, der neuen Praxis durch ihre Handlungen Sinn zu geben? Und wie stellen sich Lernberatungen dann als Teil der erwachsenenbildnerischen Realität dar? Um sich dieser Frage zu nähern, wendet sich die vorliegende Arbeit dem Phänomen Lernberatung empirisch zu. Dafür wird eine Lernberatungssequenz, die in einem Kurs zum Thema Autogenes Training im Kontext eines Qualifizierungsprojekts für Kursleitende stattfand, ausgewertet. Die Analyse erfolgt dabei als qualitative Interaktionsanalyse, die sich dadurch auszeichnet, dass die zu erforschende Handlung in ihrer Sequenzialität, d.h. in ihrem tatsächlichen Interaktionsverlauf aufgegriffen und eng am Text Satz für Satz mikroanalytisch interpretiert wird. Als methodologische Orientierungspunkte werden hierfür sowohl die (ethnomethodologische) Konversationsanalyse als auch die Objektive Hermeneutik herangezogen. Die empirische Analyse wird dabei gerahmt von einem theoretisch orientierten Teil, in dem die Debatte um selbstgesteuertes Lernen historisch, begrifflich und hinsichtlich der verwendeten Begründungsebenen aufgearbeitet wird (Kapitel 2) und unterschiedliche Konzepte zur Lernberatung referiert werden (Kapitel 3), sowie von einer forschungsgeschichtlich-methodologischen Einordnung, in der neben einem Exkurs zur Geschichte empirischer Forschungen in der Erwachsenenbildung die gewählte Analyseform der Sequenzanalyse sowohl hinsichtlich ihrer theoretischen und methodologischen Bezüge als auch anhand der Darstellung exemplarischer Studien umfassend dargestellt wird. Als eine zentrale Erkenntnis der empirischen Analyse lässt sich formulieren, dass Lernberatungshandeln in der Praxis offensichtlich nicht ausschließlich – wie in der Literatur häufig beschrieben – vom Handlungsschema der Lehre abzugrenzen ist, sondern – gerade im Bereich körper- und gesundheitsbezogener Angebote – die Grenze zum (quasi-)therapeutischen Gespräch schnell überschritten werden kann. Die Mikroanalyse kann dabei aufzeigen, wie sich dies im Gespräch im Einzelnen vollzieht, wie die Bedeutung im Gesprächsverlauf zwischen den Beteiligten interaktiv ausgehandelt wird und wie sie ihre Erwartungen, Rollenvorstellungen und Selbstbilder dabei in die gemeinsame Situation einbringen.Within the debate surrounding the increasingly discussed role of self-directed learning in continuing adult education, one repeatedly finds the demand for a shift in the professional conduct of overseeing learning from traditional approaches to a facilitated learning environment. This thesis illustrates relevant theoretical background and empirically deals with the question, how such learning consultation take place in adult education practice. Which expectations do the participants themselves introduce to situations and how do they negotiate expectations and interpretations in the course of interaction? For this thesis an analytical assessment of a learning consultation situation within an autogenous training seminar was conducted. As one main result can be asserted that the learning consultation in practice obviously is not only reliant upon action schemes for teaching but also relies to some degree upon almost therapeutic-type consultations that can quickly go beyond the boundaries of ordinary learning environments

Measuring Human Capital with Productivity-Weighted Labor Force: Methodology and Projections for China, India, the United States, and the European Union

This working paper provides a comprehensive overview of the methodology used to calculate a standardized and internationally comparable productivity-weighted labor force (PWLF) measure that takes into account both the education structure of the population and the quality of the educational system. Education-specific weights are calculated with a Mincerian earnings function on pooled data from all IPUMS-I censuses containing information on education, labor force status, and income. The education parameters are interacted with the countries' average educational attainment to account for the dependence of returns to education on the number of workers sharing that education level. Country and time specific adjustment factors for education quality are derived from skills assessment surveys. To calculate the productivity-weighted labor force size, these adjusted weights are then applied to labor force estimates and projections. The analytical value of the PWLF is validated making use of prediction exercise for GDP growth applied to a panel dataset covering all countries of the world from 1970 to 2015 for which data are available. Finally, the paper provides a practical application by forecasting PWLF figures for China, India, the United States, and the European Union from 2020 to 2100. These forecasts are compared against other population indicators (total population size, working-age population, and labor force size), highlighting the importance of population heterogeneity in the analysis of demographic trends